Solutions highlights

Solutions highlights

In order for discoveries to drive real change, they must be actively shared with decision makers and the public at large. At KER, we’ve stepped up our efforts this year to get ASU research results into the hands of people in the position to act on them. And we’ve deepened our engagement with partners to pilot and advise on solutions of public value.

State legislature presentation

Discussing extreme heat & housing with the Housing Supply Study Committee

With the state legislature forming an interim Housing Supply Study Committee, our team had a fantastic opportunity to share our research on the nexus of housing security and heat resilience. Melissa Guardaro, associate director for resilience hubs, and Lora Phillips, associate director for broader impacts, presented KER’s work at a committee meeting on the environmental impacts of increasing housing supply.

Emphasizing rising temperatures and eviction rates, and noting the particular vulnerability of mobile home residents, they testified to the need to increase housing stock that’s both affordable and easily cooled, even on extreme heat days.

Watch their presentations at bit.ly/housing-supply-study

Lora Phillips, KER's associate director for broader impacts, shares her research on local eviction rates with the state's legislature's Housing Supply Study Committee.

National collaboration for heat resilience

Seeding new ideas and partnerships at Extreme Heat Resilience Ideation Hour

In the U.S., more people die from heat than from all other natural disasters combined. What if the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) declared heat an eligible hazard, similar to floods and hurricanes, so the nation could mobilize its resources to respond?

To plant this seed and build capacity among resilience professionals beyond Arizona, KER worked with FEMA, the City of Phoenix and the University of Arizona to lead a Resilient Nation Partnership Network webinar discussing the impacts of extreme heat across the country. The event included breakout sessions on extreme heat and housing, extreme heat as a threat multiplier, extreme heat as a public health hazard, and extreme heat in light of local planning and capital improvement.

Designing extreme heat insurance

Laying the foundation to help cities mitigate extreme heat emergencies

Our team worked with insurance provider Swiss Re to exchange knowledge around the risks of extreme heat and to connect the insurance industry with designs to mitigate heat resilience. At the moment, municipalities assume the risk for extreme heat in their budgets, but how many are prepared for a worst case scenario? What happens when the energy

infrastructure buckles, when too many employees can’t get to work, when too many residents overwhelm the heat relief system all at once? What else can be done in advance to our city infrastructure to mitigate these future shocks, which are expected to worsen with anticipated increased temperatures in years to come?

By sharing our expertise about the social infrastructure of heat responses and brokering relationships with local governments and other civil society organizations, we helped Swiss Re to understand the risk landscape and to design future insurancebased solutions to help manage heat risk.

Philanthropic seminar on housing, heat and aging

awareness about vulnerabilities and solutions for older residents

While people 65 and older only make up 16% of the population in Maricopa County, they account for 21% of outdoor heat deaths and a staggering 65% of indoor heat deaths. We partnered with the Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust to host a seminar for their Grantmakers in Aging Conference on the heat and housing challenges faced by elders.

Our team shared our research on the factors that put older residents at greater risk and highlighted solutions that could be implemented at various scales to improve their housing security and heat resilience. We invited a panel of experts from AARP Arizona, the Arizona Association of Manufactured Home and RV Owners, the City of Tempe and the City of Phoenix to add their experiences on working to address this vulnerability.

Read the narrative presentation at bit.ly/housing-heat-aging

KER executive director Patricia Solis talks with local mobile home residents about their experience with extreme summer heat.

Fervor Creative

Participatory budgeting

Working with communities to mobilize resources that build resilience

When communities are involved in decisions about where to allocate resources, resilience initiatives are more likely to be successful. We also gain the dividend of investing in greater social cohesion, which itself builds resilience in our neighborhoods.

This year our partners at the Maricopa County Department of Public Health and Salud en Balance — led by Gail LaGrander and Teresa Sosa — completed a project that began with 2020 Resilience Fellow Molly Benton to engage local residents in the decision making process. Using a participatory budgeting process, volunteers collected ideas from 120 community members and presented eight for public voting. The winning proposals included a computer lab to disseminate critical information and a program offering cooling equipment to residents.

Volunteers from Salud en Balance present project ideas submitted by community members to neighborhood residents before they vote for their favorites.

Abby Johnson / ASU Knowledge Exchange for Resilience

These projects will increase access to knowledge and improve health outcomes. But perhaps more importantly, the budgeting process itself enhanced the community’s ability to adapt to future shocks and stressors by building capacity in democratic decision making, empowering neighborhood leadership and planting the seeds for greater social cohesion.

Salud en Balance Community Center serves the Perry Park neighborhood in Phoenix.

Abby Johnson / ASU Knowledge Exchange for Resilience

Reflective film experiments

Testing a new rooftop product’s ability to cool mobile homes

This summer, KER worked with multinational company 3M and partner SkyCool to help them test a new cooling film they’ve been developing. Leveraging our deep connections with Mesa’s mobile home communities, we provided an opportunity for the company to understand how their innovation could help the most vulnerable and for residents to get involved with the development of this new technology. Engaging real world users’ perspectives yielded a number of discoveries about social adaptation beyond what a traditional laboratory could offer.

While our team is still analyzing data from interviews and temperature recordings, our partners at 3M and SkyCool have already gained valuable insights about the lived experiences of potential consumers and about how their product performs on the ground.

Blu Media employees install 3M and SkyCool's reflective roof film at a mobile home in Mesa.

Abby Johnson / ASU Knowledge Exchange for Resilience

Hactivate Mesa mentors

Helping students use data to create solutions Hacktivate Mesa mentors

Executive director Patricia Solís and GIS analyst Abdulrahman “Al” Alsanad served as mentors at Hacktivate Mesa, an opportunity for local high school students to discover, study, analyze and present data about an issue or challenge facing our community. Their student team from Westwood High School IB program won their category for their work on the topic of “Heat Mitigation Through Native Vegetation”.

Patricia Solis / ASU Knowledge Exchange for Resilience